I. Field
The following description relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for multi-station request messaging.
II. Background
In order to address the issue of increasing bandwidth requirements that are demanded for wireless communications systems, different schemes are being developed to allow multiple user terminals to communicate with a single access point by sharing the channel resources while achieving high data throughputs. Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) technology represents one such approach that has recently emerged as a popular technique for the next generation communication systems. MIMO technology has been adopted in several emerging wireless communications standards, such as the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard. IEEE 802.11 denotes a set of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) air interface standards developed by the IEEE 802.11 committee for short-range communications (e.g., tens of meters to a few hundred meters).
In wireless communications systems, medium access (MAC) protocols are designed to operate to exploit several dimensions of freedom offered by the air link medium. The most commonly exploited dimensions of freedom are time and frequency. For example, in the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, the “time” dimension of freedom is exploited through the CSMA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access). The CSMA protocol attempts to ensure that no more than one transmission occurs during a period of potential high interference. Similarly, the “frequency” dimension of freedom can be exploited by using different frequency channels.
Recent developments have led to space as a dimension being a viable option to be used to increase, or at least more efficiently use, existing capacity. Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) can be used for improving utilization of the air link by scheduling multiple terminals for simultaneous transmission and reception. Data is sent to each of the terminals using spatial streams. For example, with SDMA, a transmitter forms orthogonal streams to individual receivers. Such orthogonal streams can be formed because the transmitter has several antennas and the transmit/receive channel consists of several paths. Receivers may also have one or more antennas (MIMO, SIMO). For this example, it is assumed that the transmitter is an access point (AP) and the receivers are stations (STAs). The streams are formed such that a stream targeted at STA-B, for example, is seen as low power interference at STA-C, STA-D, . . . , etc., and this will not cause significant interference and most likely be ignored. In order to form these orthogonal streams, the AP needs to have channel state information (CSI) from each of the receiving STAs. Although CSI can be measured and communicated in several ways, thereby adding complexity, the use of CSI will optimize the configuration of SDMA streams.
Additional complexities arise when MIMO is applied to multi-user (MU) systems. For example, downlink and uplink protocols in MU-MIMO communications require control messages to initiate a downlink or uplink MU-MIMO epoch. Control messages will need to work with scheduling for sending control as well as data messages, and allocating resources.
Consequently, it would be desirable to address one or more of the deficiencies described above.